Dictionary of the Imagination poems 2

Oak trees— sleeping druids in winter
Poppy—satin tongues on fire
Swan—white feathers dancing in a blue sky
Moon—a Viking ship in a midnight sea
Forest—earth carpet of wooden soldiers
Blanket—a sheep spread very thin over us at night
Pencil—a shadow line to the universe
Eagle—caged feathers  bearing sheaves of wheat and laurel branches

Across the sky, a Viking ship
sailed on a midnight sea

We wrote shadowed lines
across the universe
with caged feathers
bearing wheat and laurel
white dancers fell from the sky
and the fields bloomed
with satin tongues of fire.

Amidst the sleeping druids of winter
a carpet of wooden soldiers
rotted from old age.

• ANTARCtIC CLEANERS
• Pure metaphor poems
• Dictionary of the Imagination poems 2
• Poems of colors: Blue is a billygoat
• Dictionary of the Imagination poems

Poems of colors: Blue is a billygoat

Blue is a billygoat
who ate the lineman's red shirt
used to flag down the train
Blue is the eyes of drowned sailors
Blue is the borrowed feathers
of peacocks when the quetzal
is no longer needed in the Mayan ruins
Green is the color of quetzal birds
Quetzalcoatl is a green-feathered
snake lost in the jungle of the past
The Navajos have only one word
for green and blue, for it is the color of life
not this cold blood rusted on narrow gauge
tracks leading deeper into the jungle.

3/4
aded 9/17
some editing

• ANTARCtIC CLEANERS
• Pure metaphor poems
• Dictionary of the Imagination poems 2
• Poems of colors: Blue is a billygoat
• Dictionary of the Imagination poems

Dictionary of the Imagination poems

from a Luis Kong workshop,
using Jorge Lujan's Dictionary of the imagination

River—a mirror that runs and sings
Stars—holes in a dark tarp
Rainbow—a wet, iridescent trail of a comet used by prospectors searching for gold
River—a fish highway from the mountains to the stars
Does every river run to the sea?
indigo ink spilled
a blue trail for fish
to find the ocean
Moon—silver money sobbing in the pockets (Lorca)
a period  where the sky ends
Sea— blue river tongues licking at the feet of tropical islands
Cemetery—a plot where dead people live
Mountains—teeth piercing the clouds
hungry mouths feeding the sky
eating the weather
mouths voraciously feeding upon the clouds
Solar wind—huge bellows sucking and blowing on cosmic fires
Sun—the ouroboros eye of the dragon
a giant yellow ball lost in space
a feathered chariot pulling the eye of the dragon
ouroboros across the blue mantle of space
Rain—a cloud bursting into tears
blood from wounded clouds
Fish—small silver coins flashing in open sea banks
Snow—frozen white thoughts leaking from wounded clouds
Bluejay‚blue water flying in the wind
thief of catfood
Earth—a big blue ball in space
a bulging suitcase of extinct species

Use six definitions in a poem. It doesn't have to make sense. Don't use the original noun.

Huge bellows push the chariot

carrying the eye of the dragon

across the mantle of space.

frozen white thoughts

leak from wounded clouds

to fall into agape beaks 

feeding on the sky

a wet iridescent trail of a comet

used by prospectors in search of gold

and the small silver coins shining

open the sea banks to vaults in tropical islands.

take 2:

The feathered chariot 

that carries the eye of the dragon 

across the sky is blown off course 

by huge bellows held by giants 

hidden under the mantle of space 

but there are holes in the tarp

the frozen white thoughts of clouds 

leak into agape beaks feeding in the sky

it leaves a wet, iridescent trail 

used by comets and prospectors 

in search of gold and small silver coins 

hidden in sea banks where blue tongues 

lick at the feet of tropical islands.

Take 3:

Who is instructing the giants 

holding huge bellows 

that blow the feathered chariot 

carrying the eye of the dragon 

across the mantle of space?

but there are holes in the tarp

the frozen white thoughts of clouds

leap into agape mountain beaks

feeding on the sky

When we forget the names of the sun

it leaves a wet, iridescent trail

of flies and oranges under a full moon.

3/4

• ANTARCtIC CLEANERS
• Pure metaphor poems
• Dictionary of the Imagination poems 2
• Poems of colors: Blue is a billygoat
• Dictionary of the Imagination poems

2/25 Journal

I need to write in longhand to soothe my brain before I get into revising my calendar, such a left-brained activity. All those dates to keep, it destroys my mood for writing.

Journal entry here, no problems today. Frost outside, frozen pipes. Small glass bones emerge from the hose and sing like wind chimes. I think of the old Celtic riddle of the bone the melts. The ancient Celts didn't have hoses, yet they saw the connection.

I spent yesterday in bed, flat out as my neck adjustment left me weak and sore, an unexpected holiday from reality. I've managed to work the computer from the prone position, not as much weight on my neck that way. It's magic to write on the computer, however I doubt I'll give up my hard copy. The act of cursive writing soothes my brain and steadies me.

The computer is better for revision. Something I've never been able to do much of, and my work suffers for it. So, this will be the year of revision. I actually want to stay home and to write and to revise.

It is difficult to write and to teach and to see John all at the same time, but I believe I've just begun a new pattern that feels a bit saner. Can I juggle all three at once? Of course, next year I will have no idea what I'll be doing. CPITS?

I know now that I don't want Devorah's job I don't want to be Statewide Coordinator. I can't even handle the stress of being an Area Coordinator right now. The thought of 60% time working on grants is a grim proposition.

So what's next in the wings? CPITS is like a small monarchy. Can I work with Duane BigEagle if I take Paula Gocker's assistant job? Do I even want to get involved on that level and what about the grant writing proposition with Lee? Is that even more stress? I ask is there anything I want to do that doesn't involve stress?

I'm sleeping late these days. As it is, I am hyperactive and then when the inner kid reemerges, I'm also excited about life. Somehow all the bustle makes me feel vitally alive. Wish there was a less stressful way to make it so. I have such a need to produce work, and to get my work out there in the world.

I also need to go do a good job on my current commitments. Photos to John for his project, document Gail Newman's project, a lot happening these days. I got my list of photos off to American Poetry Review for the top 100 poets. Then there's the lesser ones.

I need to follow up on that Napa Gallery offer, a part of me still says no, I don't want it. What to do when an opportunity strikes, or in this case, hits me over the head? Jump on it, or let it go willfully and without regret?

John said that Jennifer Jones of KPFA wants me to read on the air. The Storer TV reading is supposed to air on March 6. So much going on and all these contests are forcing me to revise my work on the fly. And I have so little time that I have to jump in without thinking Zen mind, make choices, and just stick to them. No time for indecision.

The IRS wants to arrest me for back taxes. Those years after the accident, where I was barely surviving, I have to reconstruct those records soon, and get them off my back. The fucking government squeezing blood from turnips. I don't believe in paying taxes. I don't even earn enough to pay taxes, but my CAC grants brought me out into the open and now they know about me.

ON WRITING

Experience in search of a form
becomes articulate
in the minutiae of detail.
How I use my creative potential
a small portion of the time,
and how I rarely write down
the long flowing inner dialogs,
because I'm waiting for a crystalline
moment to focus in on,
which never comes in that form.
So I wait in vain. Meanwhile,
the Muses capriciously pollute
their teachings with the droll facts
of dailiness until we capsize.
This is not new information—
but poetry is like that.

2/1987

Prior claim

A turmoil of images bombarded me when I got home. As I drove down Nicasio Road, I reached for pen and paper but instead grabbed a dull kitchen knife. Then I grabbed a pencil with no lead. Then I grabbed the gauge for the tires, all apt symbols.

My neck collar prevents me from seeing what I am writing. And I hold onto connected fragments that I'm not able to record. Only to lose them all. No placeholders.

I drive by RuccaRucca Ranch, and am flooded with memories. The first time I rode Frankie's horse around Nicasio Reservoir, she was so sure it was alive, she was shivering, and it was all I could do to get her to walk along the fire road. We sat around in the kitchen drinking strong coffee and smoking dope while Jerry and Micky jammed in the living room.

I think of the Grateful Dead and the obscene amount of money they used to buy that land. I loved their music, and can recite all the names of the rock stars in the Valley, the Grateful Dead Jefferson Starship, Santana. But when their records sold, they suddenly had lots of money, and they bought up chunks of the land. And our taxes went up.

We smoked dope and danced at RuccaRucca Ranch but underneath it all I never allowed myself to be seduced by it all. Perhaps this is why I refused to buy their records in the first place. I was a conscientious objector.

Last night, Jane was raging on about communism, while we were there protecting them, they were taking our freedom. I ask, what has to do with Nicaragua? I am apolitical. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Byron. We are all suspect. I believe my friends in Nicaragua are telling the truth, and the truth has many faces.

I had forgotten how loudly the pine trees roar when the north wind circles the valley. Or how the stars look more correct framed by this particular fold of hills, or how difficult it is to write left-handed.

Over Pt. Reyes Road, while writing this down, a finite shifting of gears, wordplay and interplay make both writing and driving barely possible. I have a hard time going home it's even harder to leave west with the night. Beryl Markham wrote: if you have to leave home, do it swiftly, go as far as you can, and never come back.

I am even more enraged when my rage toward my mother softens. She reaches over me to dip her hands into the sunlight from the south window. I think my hatred is so thick sometimes it clots the air. She says she gets depressed when she can't go outside.

The wind howls, and catches itself on the corners of the house and in the hexagonal sieves of the chickenwire fence outside. I am a spy here. Taking notation. This disengages me from some of the rage.

All of the new owners of this land, part of which I hold a shared trust in, on a piece of paper for unbuildable allotment of land that I want to return to, and can never seem to leave behind.

So many strangers have grown into their justified rights of ownership. There's a new no trespassing sign on the corral gate. Is it  meant for us we who actually own the land, by our very years here, have prior claim, or do the newcomers?

These newcomers have been here a while now, these strangers who can never fathom the memories I hold. Horse Hill, the old hitchingpost, now someone's faux castle. On the path by Arroyo Creek where I rode by my horse in summer, now has three new houses—three white elephants rising huge in Bianchi's field. I feel physically ill by their presence. This progress we measure by planting massive houses over the green fields of the past.

The Paper Letters to the Editor, SR Sewage Ocean Outfall/Moratorium, Feb 19, 1987

My letter to Dan Hauser in regards to Ocean outfall, an asinine proposal to dump Santa Rosa sewage on the Sonoma coast, specifically Salmon Creek.

Last Run

I felt betrayed when John took me down that last slope knowing I was so tired. It was the last run of the day, and I had a bad knee. I said I didn't want to go down that slope several times. It fell on deaf ears.

When I asked him which slope he wanted to go down, I wanted to relinquish control, and offer him the choice as a token offering of our last run. When he chose that particular run, I felt I had to go through with it, though my commonsense said no way!

If I looked at it from his perspective it was possible to get down the hill. It would really please him if I said yes. I was doubtful, which affected my skiing ability.

When I took a nasty spill near the top, I should've said no, but I felt once committed, I had to follow through. And I was too tired to ski the run.

It was a nightmare getting down the hill. I couldn't turn to the right because the muscles in my left knee were fatigued. Snow conditions were terrible. Wet snow, an ungroomed slope, and lots of potholes and bushes. But I had to get down that slope.

I was more angry than scared. Angry with myself for going along with John's suggestion, angry that my knee wouldn't work, angry that my skills weren't good, etc.

When I got to the bottom of the hill, I hated John for getting me into this mess in the first place. Or for getting myself into the mess.

Yes, I could've exercise free will and said no, pushed John into a safer run, but I didn't want to do that – all because of my wanting to please him. So I got angry. I had worked myself into a situation I couldn't back out of for fear of losing face. And now I had a sore knee to babysit.

VALENTINE TO JOHN

VALENTINE TO JOHN

You, my valentine, never received this card
after a weekend on the slopes of Mt. Shasta
We skied on a form of pure light.
In the darkness of the car trunk,
the Lemurians kept it from you.
While we ate white chocolate
the pomegranate seeds within me
pulled toward the darkness
wanting their due.
This is what comes of childhood,
old broken paths, losing our way
but we can go on from here
because each path is always new.

2/18/1987

Journal 2/18

2/18

Afraid of this vast expanse of white, I do nothing. It is fitting that I can't write about the darkness that descends upon me, thus tainting the light. Jim Byrd says to write about it nonstop for five minutes without editorializing, and all I can think of is how to render it into poetic imagery, thus diluting the raw anguish and anger. Funny to hear my own lessons coming back to me from my poetry protégé.

I write this journal entry well after the fact. The untamable beast rose up within me and I lashed out at John all weekend long. Trouble is, I really don't know what set it off, or what it was even about. The worse it became, the more I hated myself, and the more I hated myself the more angry I got.

I saw John as incompetent, and I railed at him. I saw him as flaky and uncaring and so I withdrew from him. I had dishonorable thoughts of wanting to sleep with other men. I was wishing Geoff Davis wasn't an alcoholic and that it would have worked out with him. I did love him fiercely. I was wishing to change the past and to relive it, instead of living in the present.

Here I have in front of me a perfectly good man who meets most of my expectations and requirements, and still I am unhappy. I am lifting layers of clouded emotion from my armor; I decide the problem isn't just with John, whether we will resolve the issue of having or not having a baby, but it's something that goes deeper into my past – namely my way of defining a relationship, and dealing with my own fears.

I slipped back into childhood and discovered some of the joys, and I forgot the raging aggression that that also had lived there too long. It bloomed fully forth from a deep hell within me to taint the sky and the world.

None of us are free from guilt. There are things he does, that I question why he does them and I arrive at my own cosmology. I need to examine also, my own emotional scaffolding.

The list of grievances that I make pointing to some significant act on his part. How accurate are they? Or is it a figment of my imagination and my fears leading the way? A part of me thinks that if I'm very bad, he'll get tired of me and break off the relationship. This of course saddens me. But it is also something I secretly desire. I'm feeling smothered.

Then the bubble of tears wells up and the aching heart threatens to choke me. I want to relinquish my right to choose this relationship, and to step into the role of victim. But I'm not a very good victim.

If we break up because I'm bad, then I'll be able to say I Told You So and pass the blame. This is where the threads connect. I need to have someone to blame it all on when the going gets rough. And I can't seem to allow myself to accept blame. Every one else is wrong; I'm right. Black-and-white. Divided fences but the issues aren't that simple.

My paranoia assumes that he is out to get me. Not in the physical sense, but by his indifference. I will cease to exist. But I can very effectively anger him. I do exist for him, but his short attention span upsets me. I feel threatened. He doesn't love me, except during the two-minute intervals of sexual congress. What daisy petals do I need to pluck? Even or odd numbers?

To survive in this world, we need to add a certain amount of time for each necessary activity. I need to do this too. Yet, I feel threatened when he does it. I don't want someone hanging all over me either. I'm not comfortable in either camp.

What is so bad about his ways that irritates me so? I don't trust him. Why? Because I feel like I'm a possession, not a person. Why a possession? Are you being possessed? Not in the alchemical sense. I don't trust the way he's able to disengage himself from me so easily when he has to do things. I wish I could do the same.

I feel all his other priorities, writing, his career, his daughter, Spanish, all come before me. I am low (wo)man on the totem pole and it's true I'm not at the top (if it's really an apt analogy), I don't think it's quite that linear, but do I really want to be at the top? Do I want that kind of placement in someone else's life?

How do we effectively manage our lives together without one or the other feeling threatened, or subsumed by the relationship? An I drowning in floodwaters?

Is this really the issue? Is this why I drove home last night sobbing? Do I have to assume that if there are housekeeping problems, that we have to break up, so that I can sort out my feelings?

The thing is, I'm not too sure what my feelings are.

We woke up in the middle of the night making love. I know that some part of me is heavily sedated by the black hole raging within me. It is more pure and loving, and with this newer self, I do love him. I need to tame my inner beasts, but this other self has little power. It is a battle within me as well as my response to some of his own ambiguities coming forth.

We are both so noncommittal. I think this ambiguous state has led to my deep turmoil. I don't want to marry him now, that's not the issue, but commitment to another human being, knowing the risks, and knowing the possibility of failure, is a frightening proposition.

Suppose we do go for it, and then freak out up and break up in a few years? I will have irrevocably given a part of my life to him that I won't be able to recall, my childbearing years. I'm not interested in having a baby right now, I get cross around them, and I don't want to give up my free time. I'm selfish I feel guilty about it.

How much of this is a biological urge? If I don't have children, who will be with me, who will be my family when I am old? Is this fear of the future a real truth I have to grapple with; or is it merely fear? Which path to take?

I remember seeing a copy of Vincent van Gogh's Crows Over a Cornfield in a high school painting class, and I was immediately struck by the metaphor of three paths leading off into three blind choices.

Later, in college, when I saw the original painting, there were no paths; I had imagined them being there. But the metaphor still remains with me. I feel close to understanding van Gogh's madness and the choices he made.

Destiny. I choose to do certain things. They have a way of becoming a reality. I wanted a photo in American Poetry Review; a reading in Sacramento; a review of our chapbook; my artwork selling well at the Valentine art show, a gallery in Napa interested in my work. I forgot to name these wishes becoming reality, all of which, I might add, became true within the course of a week.

So where's the elation, the recognition that should come with the reaching and the striving for these goals? I was elated at the valentine art show and my color piece went for so much money, a piece that I thought was nothing. My better piece, the handmade paper one, sold for much less money, and I was hurt because it wasn't framed, and it wasn't at eye level. And I felt betrayed because someone else didn't treat my other piece with the same respect.

It boils down to my perceptions of my work being different than that of others. This relates to my discomfort with my black beasts, and to John. I'm afraid that we don't share the same values on commitment and love. Maybe we do, AIDS is certainly keeping everyone monogamous these days. On the straight and narrow. A good thing, but it is an artificial restraint like marriage vows.

Are we truly committed to each other in spite of those constraints? If it wasn't for those constraints, what others would we place upon ourselves? Are we evolving naturally into this relationship or what are the constraints placed on an artificial hold and artificial direction upon us?

Free will. To be a free agent, one must first recognize that one must take control and exercise free will. Not wait until it's taken away through a lack of choice; or be ambiguous and take an ambiguous stance. How much of this am I bringing upon myself and how much of it is externally related, or is it something I do have control over?

Control has always been an issue in my life. Is this upwelling of rage a form of control? I want to control John and when he doesn't do something right, I berate him, and myself. Then I feel guilty and I berate myself some more, thus feeding the vicious cycle. It is a perverse form of self-control.

Betrayal, our fight in Mexico City is over the same issues. I assumed he threw away our packing ropes and blamed him, deriding him. He got angry and said he had nothing to do with it.

It no longer mattered who forgot the ropes but the issue of betrayal arose. I felt he had left the ropes because he know longer saw any value in them and discarded them. I used that as an analogy for our relationship. He will do the same with me, or I, with him. Discarding me when I'm no longer useful what I have to go by is his past track record with women.

How can I assume this will be any different, am I introducing the seeds of destruction, making my own fears into reality? Am I seeing an apt analogy in his everyday actions, judge by my own perverse standards, or is there something wrong with my methods of reviewing the situation?

Every time this feeling of betrayal arises, I feel some threads break in our bond. I think of those fine filaments of muscle that hold up my neck. None are strong in and of themselves, but when enough of them are fatigued the result is a massive muscle spasm. I can literally no longer hold up my head.

Is this why my neck hurts so bad right now? How much of my anger is related to the constant and inexorable pain in my neck and back right now? How irrational am I because of this constant pain? And why did this pain flare up again in the first place?

Chicken and egg syndrome, the stress is eating away at me. One cannot strip away a layer without discovering another layer, and beneath that layer is yet another layer, and so on, ad infinitem.

Red Pepper

The red pepper I sprinkled on my brother's tongue glowed like rare earth and the tears rolled down his cheeks. I thought it was funny, how much water he drank to quench the fire. I traded him my pennies and nickels for his small thin dimes with wings explaining the nickels and pennies were bigger and fatter than his old dimes. Silver winged Mercury caught my greedy eye and I extolled the virtues of copper Lincolns, Buffaloes, and Indians. We traded wooden nickels from the general store.

Living on the edge of nostalgia !living in a house with wood heat, and the copper tub with its veridian streaks simmering on the stove for dishes laundry and our baths. Sometimes Grandma would lug steaming tubs to the real bathtub on the back porch with claw feet. One hot summer day we filled it with cold water from the spring but my cousin Bill pooped in it. We all jumped out screaming and he just sat in the cool white water not knowing what the fuss was all about.

The kerosine stove glug-gluging from the amber-pink wine jug with a biting odor, as I lay between the green enamel stove legs shaped in that classic turn-of-the-century harp curve. And the new yolk sunshine plastic bowl melted from the heat of the burner but the buckwheat pancakes my grandmother made filled the need in my stomach more solid than stone. I had no idea it wasn't to last, that I'd spend most nights awake, wondering where she'd gone to and the beginnings of invisible threads tugging at me during these countable rotations of the earth.

Hot Vienna Bread every Sunday, the bacon and eggs that always made me sick, but I ate them anyway—and reading the Funnies, rituals of childhood. After years of not buying the paper, I buy it each Sunday because there is a mortal comfort in that small insignificant action. I eat bacon and eggs that still make me feel sick and at the end of the week, the piles of newspapers, starters for the morning fire to keep us warm throughout the winter.

The first time I saw snow falling on these coastal hills—a white blanket transformed the known world into a place almost familiar, like visiting home in dreams where things aren't quite as you remember them. That’s how you tell the difference between the real and the unseen. My red robe bled against all that white !and, cold gnawing at my bare feet giving them a taste, a forerunner of the deaths to come.

And those winged dimes what happened to them? Did we spend them on candy or raccoon tails at the general store, or did their thin silver trails slip into cracks only to be rendered visible under the light of the moon that appears so infrequently in dreams?

I have no idea when this was written early 1980s. Sometime during the dot-matrix days. That makes it as late as 1989.

John Oliver Simon, Maureen Hurley to Read, Sacramento Poetry Center

FROM THE EGYPTIAN

FROM THE EGYPTIAN

Like young chicks without feathers, 

the wet birds skim under the moon

three nights later

a hawk measures the sky 

with invisible ropes

and in this deep pool

where the young calf dances

people come to drink

A heron raking the water with his legs

drags a stream of tulips

veed feathers of water in his wake.

2/7/1987

a transliteration from the Egyptian

BEYOND THE REEF

BEYOND THE REEF

The siren in the night

The calling of a whale

And beyond the reef

A thunderhead gathers

and takes in the sea.
I am breathing beside my body

The distant earth is my blood.

The heart of this universe is pale.

White blood of the galaxy

And this crayon of the sea colors the air.

And I am working hard

Looking for something
beyond the reef.

2/7/1987
a transliteration

FROM THE EGYPTIAN

Making a white heart for SSU Art from the Heart show (journal)

White on white, a map of the heart. For the Sonoma State University's Art from the Heart Valentine show, I made a piece of art on Morillo board, a papier-mâché heart on a sheet of paper, a heart cast from paper pulp. I added a section of urchin shell, a spotted guinea fowl's feather, some silk from a dead grandmother's shawl, and fragile coral from the Bahamas.

This is what the viewer sees. What I see: a break up of a seven-year relationship, too many belongings stored under my damp house, an accident, my whiplash, a long slow recovery, and an unusually wet winter – not a passage of time. But flooding stole memory from me.

It took me another seven years to heal before I could confront the loss of my possessions. Negatives without emulsion, glued photographs of random color and shape, this once was Yosemite. This once was a photo of my horse, my cats, me as a child, my friends. Imagine 20 years of documentation of childhood. Gone. My first books, Bambi's Children, books of fairytales illustrated by Arthur Rackham, and Kay Nielsen, The Bobbsey Twins, and The X Bar X boys, an outdoor girls' adventures series, all rotted to pulp.

All my art books. Dali's gold foil candy covered book with drooping watches glued together, now a large rotting laminated piece of cardboard. Janson's History of Art is now a gray pulpy mass. I won't miss that book. Or Mr. Johanson who insisted that we read it cover to cover. He hadn't updated his teaching skills in 50 years.

I mourn for my Encyclopedia of Natural History book with its lists of all the plants and animals of North America, now gone. I spent hours poring over that book as a child. Rereading each section over and over, collecting feathers, fur bits, chipmunk tails (the cats brought in), etc., to augment the hokey illustrations, now barely recognizable. A painful loss. How I loved those books! That one really really shaped my childhood interest in plants and animals.

I saw my very first coatimundi in the Yucatan, which we promptly ran over in our rental car, a rare jungle animal. And we ran over it. Whoops! John said, it was his time. I first learned of coatimundi from that book. The Spanish word is tejón, foes that mean there once were coatis roaming Tejon Pass? Probably not, as it means badger.


My horse's pedigree fell out of the back of the truck as I headed for the dump, taking what was left of my recorded memories of childhood with it. A pamphlet on the US equestrian team, and the Olympics in Mexico City fluttered to the ground.

As a child I fantasized about going to Mexico City. I read up Tenochtitlán and of the canals of Xochimilco, the floating islands. I was going to get there and visit the Museum of Anthropology too. Someday. I was.

Well it finally happened, I did get to Mexico City. You still can see some of the canals and the standing patches of water, but most of the lake bed is filled with cement. The temples have been torn down. I walk on paving stones that once were part of Tenochtitlan. The basilica of the church is made of ancient dressed stone. Tenochtitlán lives in the hidden hearts of stone. The lake lives beneath the city. You can see glimpses of it beneath the sewer grating on the streets. the ancient sure hidden in those cavernous depths.

How can I put all this in that white pulp slurry of a heart? Old art folders, once full of pristine watercolor paper, mildewed and rotted with age. I shredded the rag paper and bleached it . I used the pulp to make valentines of white handmade paper. Who will noticed that there are shreds of fine silk from Bob's grandmother's shawl?

When we got to Oxnard to visit Bob's grandmother, she was so excited that she had a heart attack, and died soon after. We were devastated. I know that Bob's father somehow blamed us for it. He was that kind of man. Hard to believe his mother was so loving. A bon vivant who knew Diego Rivera, and once showed us a mock-up of a mural he was painting.

When Bob left me, the shawl was one of the few things he didn't take with him. Probably because it was rotted at the time, like him, the decay from within. I used it as a beautiful curtain that let the sunlight in but blocked out peering eyes. The cross-sections of pale blue ribbon silk against sheer gauze, and a hand-knotted fringe. Someone said it was a bar mitzvah shaw. Hidden Judaism in the most WASPish of families, there was even a menorah in the closet. Her husband was Dalmatian, and what else? The story is lost forever.

Someone bought the heart at the art auction, I don't know who, I have no photos of it. Somehow it's fitting, since it was made of lost things from the past. Nostalgia tinted with pain of things lost forever, except for a glancing blow in this writing.

Baja Journal from the Air: revisiting the past, ruminating on photography and art

1/17 Remembering the past, exploits, from the air.... these second-hand memories, once removed, like unfamiliar second cousins.

I sit in my bed remembering an airplane ride, which in turn, reminded me of three previous trips. Memory within memory within memory—everything reshaping to fit the current turn of events. Reality vs. memory.

As I write about this, what is real? What becomes the synthesis for my poetry? Or my art? When I can record so little during the actual experience? I am so absorbed, so involved in the new experiences, it leaves little time for reflection, and recording of observation.

Even my photography falls off the wagon. At least I do it, but I forget to use the tools. Also, a part of me doesn't want to disrupt the absorption process with the intrusion of my camera.

Behind the camera, I become an organ, sensing only light and shape. I lose contact with where I am and what I'm doing.

At the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, after I'd shot a roll of B&W kid shots for John's book, I said I wanted to go back in to see the Mayan exhibit. John said, "But we've been in the Mayan exhibit for the past 20 minutes!"

POP! ZIP! A strange scrambling of perception as I take a few minutes to refocus on my surroundings. Oh. Of course.

To photograph, sometimes my other senses retreat. My eye, the part of the brain that sees shape and light comes forward, becomes dominant. Nothing else exists. Speech is laborious. Exhaustion falls off. The world exists only in a dimension of light, shadows and shape. I am always dazed, and somewhat exhausted after an hour of shooting. It is so intensely absorbing. Utterly so.

I believe the Indians who said that he camera takes a little bit of their soul. It takes something of the photographer's soul too.

I did some charcoal pastel drawings of an Edward Curtis print of an Indian holding up a buffalo (bison) skull to the sky. In the second drawing he holds a box camera up. In the third drawing, he becomes the buffalo with the camera.

And in the fourth drawing, he becomes a shape in contrasting colors. Red and green, like a color negative. Horribly naive drawings. The four pieces are not particularly successful as far as art goes, but I like the idea that spurred me to do it. I destroy them. Baby and bathwater. The art is a byproduct of the experience, a symbol of the thought process.

Sometimes it takes on more, or other meanings beyond the original intent. But for the most part, the finished product is only the tip of the iceberg. What leads me to art is a long, and complicated process. A jumble of memories, conflicting sentiments, and ideas pour into a piece.

When a piece is completed it takes on a life of its own. All that underwater ice. The subconscious, if you will, is no longer relevant, or important. Ghostlike, it's both there, and not there.

added 9/17

Baja Journal from the air: Bahía Concepción from the air

Bahía Concepción from the air. I can make out Sanispac Point where John Ford lives. I saw his tall daughter, Angelica, watching us as she walked along the shore in a long white peasant dress, as we desperately rowed against the afternoon wind from Lighthouse Island.

How foolish we were to go so far out, and then to not leave the island before the afternoon winds arose. We took turns in the water, using our fins to propel our raft. We made it to the lee side of Sanispac, but offshore winds made rowing impossible. I waded among the boulders towing the raft. The sharp coral punctured my diving booties.

Someone in a boat gave us a tow to shore that last half mile, thank god. We could've done it on our own. We'd made it through the worst part, but we were cold and exhausted.

From the air I can make out Lighthouse Island—a fair distance to row against the wind and current in a small leaking rubber boat. In hindsight, I am impressed by our past exploits and our sheer foolhardiness.


added 9/17

Baja Journal from the air: Lagunas Hanson, Salada, & the Salton Sea

Baja—flying up the peninsula. I am struck by the geologic nakedness of the land. It's as if someone had peeled the skin back to reveal a layer of muscle and tissue and bone beneath. Erosion. Etched canyons on smooth mesas. 

Vulcanism. Perfect craters on top of the mesa. One half of a moon crater casting a perfect shadow behind it. The escarpment, a rift that divides Baja west and east. Sierra de San Pedro Mártir looms, and Picacho del Diablo, pink granite rises straight up 10,000 feet. Cerro del la Cúpula's observatories, like strange fungus.

A misplaced wedge of blue: Laguna Hansen, on top of that flat crest. When we drove in 30 miles on dirt roads—if you can call them roads—and pygmy forests. We never could see more than a few feet ahead of us. And beyond that isolated blue ledge, a piece of sky? A tiny mirror of the sky, the Sea of Cortez.

The shallow basin where the Colorado River enters (negligible), and the seasonal Laguna Salada, an inland sea, ten meters below sea level, is like its twin, the Salton Sea, in the Coachilla Valley. Like the Salton, it comes and it goes.

From the air it's so obviously part of the Sea of Cortez bed. Very little elevation separates Laguna Salada, the Salton Sea, and the Sea of Cortez from each other. Just a little rise of sand dunes, and flat sand bars several miles wide. I imagine how it must've looked before we robbed the mighty Colorado River of its mouth. A vast delta and miles of wetlands. Lagunas reflecting the sky.

Laguna Salada 1984-2016 Laloxtreet, YouTube

These lakes may be man-made in recorded history—when we began tinkering with the Colorado's flow. But these bodies of water have come and gone so many times without our help. All are rifts, from the San Andreas Fault.

The Salton Sea is rising, inundating the houses along the shore. Agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley. It’s seeking the ancient Lake Cahuilla shoreline. You can see the bathtub ring along the foot of the mountains. The Colorado  River aqueduct burst in 1906, and ran into the dry lake bed for two whole years. But there's also a record of the Salton Sea having water in 1849 as well, with no help from man—meaning Europeans. And of course, the Coachilla Indians claim it always had water. Until the arrival of the white man. There are ancient fish weirs along its archaic shores.

Ditto that for Laguna Salada. Who was around to record it, other than the Coachilla Indians?

Mexico/California: two "manmade" seas straddling the border. They say Laguna Salada is manmade too, and will evaporate within 20 years. It's happening already, the beach resorts no longer fringe the lake. A dock surrounded by sand. We walked out a long way before we could swim.

We swam out to some submerged trees covered with barnacles above the level of the lake water. And we had a lively discussion as to what came first, the barnacle or the tree. The tree, of course. But barnacles? How did they even get here? There is no passage to the Sea of Cortez.

Of course, I'm still trying to grasp the idea of what look like oak trees growing in this barren land, in the first place. Lake or no lake. This was once a wooded valley with vast marshlands.

The Salton Sea, also well below sea level, has become a poisonous wasteland from agricultural runoff. And the New American River drains effluent from Mexicali, on the border, into the US. But the US has something to do with the pollution returned to our shores from the other side of the border. The pharmaceutical companies evading US pollution laws, are on Mexican soil. Exempt.

The politics of land use: only the land suffers.

What we cannot change.

added 9/17

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

Mexico City Journal

1/7 The problem with all this running everywhere is that I never have enough time to sit still and organize my thoughts, let alone, write. John is a compulsive writer. He can't help himself. Couldn't stop writing if his life depended on it, while I have to struggle to align my thoughts in any semblance of order.

A fragment: I am in awe of the Yucatan, the jungle, so familiar, something almost remembered, as if from a pre-cambrian past.

Mérida Mordida

At the farmers' market, the Ladinos sellers stop harassing us momentarily to admire and to touch my turquoise necklace. Suddenly I had something they wanted. The Mayans revere jade above gold, turquoise was a close second. 

Are we returned to Mérida, our car was gone. Towed? Stolen?

Mérida without baggage. No luggage. Just the clothing on our backs and a few pesos in our pockets. A long story, several trips across the city, and several dollars poorer, we retrieve our rented car from the towing compound.

A Ladino family takes pity on us and gives us a ride from the compound to the fine office on the other side of Mérida, and back to the compound again. Their car too was towed. 

They laugh as John jokes with them in Spanish about grudas, or grutas, meaning mordidas. We get charged six times local rate because we are gringos. They are in their late 40s, with a carful of children. Their fine is much less. They won't accept any money for driving us back and forth. We shake hands and smile. Odd way to meet the local populace. We're cruising around in a huge tanker American car with a bunch of Mayans. 

In line again, we meet a man who had made the unfortunate mistake of being outside his house at 2 AM with his car and trailer, when the police pulled up. When they questioned him, he said he lived there, but they towed his car and trailer anyway, then beat him up and threw him in jail. The fine was high for him too. We all pulled out spare change to help him. Moral: don't park in the streets of Merida or you'll pay la mordida.

Quetzal Feathers, Jaguar Sighting

The pyramids of the Yucatán. We climbed every pyramid we could find. We climbed each temple, counting stairs and breaths, as the year drew to a close. At the stela below the temple of Cobá, an amber ring of copal and melted wax. Candles held vigil beneath the shell pitted limestone stelae. The Mayan hieroglyphs are pitted almost beyond recognition.

A Mayan park ranger in zoris, a whistle about his neck, mounted on a rusted bike, said that a jaguar was killed here for nights ago. We can almost hear the eerie cat cry and the jungle reeks of cat odor.

At Chichén Viejo there are few tourists. It is off the beaten path. In the partially cleared jungle, pale grass like a fur coat, covers the stones. Each mound, a collapsed temple or a hut. Lives lived and lost. Unexcavated.

I'm in the Templo del Falos. I could hear something breathing outside but I was the only one inside. John was away exploring another temple.

I wanted to sit on those wide stone benches 
and touch you. There, and there.
But you pulled away, ever the acetic. 
Your eyes were brimming with desire.

We follow the Mayan path of raised limestone blocks back into the jungle. I hear the breathing of hounds behind me. I feel the presence of eyes upon my back. The whispering grows louder, more intensified as we walk faster.

At the na, a Mayan hut, an oval boat-like thatched wattle and daub hut, we stopped, look down into the dry well. And we took photos but the shutter stuck, and you refused to cross the threshold of the hut a second time.

I am entranced by a small stone idol with indistinct features at the foot of the fire pit. Light ash is still swirling in the air. Remnants of the 20th century, some plastic bags in the rafters, and bottles behind the shack. Someone still uses this hut.

The gods have moved away from Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. They live here in the ruins. I say all this is nonsense. There are no more gods. This is merely rock and sky. Acab Dzib keeps its silence. Obscure writing.

But something is still following us through the jungle. Not tourists, they don't come this far. From a small temple, earlier, we spied a stray group of tourists. They never even saw us. We knew we were alone here. And something was tracking us. We broke into a run, following the curved green wall, the urge to hurry intensifying our need to return to the 20th century.

Something blue catches my eye. I pick up a ragged, broken brilliant feather that turns blue and green then indigo like a peacock feather, that iridescent green. I look at it and realize it is a quetzal feather. No they're extinct in this area my guidebook says. A green bluejay? No too bright. What is this feather doing here? An old feather, part of a Mayan headdress?

The bushes have eyes. We protect ourselves from curses and emerge from behind the nunnery into dazzling light, where sedate groups of tourist randomly snap photographs while we linger on the edge of darkness, the jungle closes in behind just with a snap.

You bow to the darkness, your fingers in lotus position against them like a hex.

In this jungle we are unbound by time. This river of air unfolds clocks and we cross memories and images, interstices. When one path crosses another, we are are unsure of when will be, but not where we are.

I keep imagining mysterious stories in this jungle, of those who hiked along these paths and reemerged years later with wild tales of feathered serpents and stone Chaak Mools turning their heads to watch them pass.

Tourists sit on the raingod Chaak's offering bowl, the one that Chaak Mool holds out begging for a fresh human heart. Instead he gets dozens of large human asses draped on the lip of his offertory bowl. He wears that same half amused expression for centuries on the end. Perhaps those who sat on his stomach will die of heart failure.

There are traces of red ocher embedded in the deep crevices of the statues. Someone is worshiping them still. Polychrome temples, pavilions and statues. Red iron, cinnabar, yellow ocher, chrome green. And that indescribable Maya blue—the sacred color of Chaak, the rain god. The red and black umbers are the most enduring colors of the stucco frescoes and carved walls, are but obscure traces of what once was here.

We count steps on the pyramid: 91 steps times four sides equals 364, and the top step equals one year. The Mayans still paint unlucky people blue but no longer throw them down the well or into the cenote.

Underneath El Castillo, the tallest pyramid of each city is called El Castillo, there's usually a governor's palace and a nunnery. Whether these titular roles actually existed as such as another matter—this is what they are called. Inside the Castillo is another temple, and inside that temple is the throne of the red jaguar with jade eyes. Like infinity looking in on itself.

Trono de Jaguar en El Castillo, Chichen Itza.

RACING DARKNESS

We glimpsed our first Coatimundi in the Yucatán,
which we promptly ran over with our rental car.
A rare jungle animal. And we ran it down.
His black and white tail with its warning stripes,
was useless against nervous gringos racing the darkness.
Whoops! said John, I guess it was his time.

Late Dec., or early Jan., 1987 (written down on 1/7/87—probably on a scrap of paper)
added  & revised 9/17 In Mexico, it is never a good idea to drive after dark.

Puffins, Ken Larsen, watercolors

Visiting the Polivka family in Paradise. Their daughter was a friend of Ken Larsen’s. The old folks are gone as is the son who sold Ken the VW squareback I painted. Ken said the family sold  the Paradise house a few years ago. Polivka was an aeronautical engineering who fled Czechoslovakia after WWII.

Below, a study of puffins. Every once and a while, we would get buzzed by puffins blown off course. What those arctic pelagic birds thought of Point Reyes National Seashore is anyone’s guess. My grannie loved watching the puffins when she was a child in Bantry. I did these puffins from photos, I guess. I don’t remember.

Nasturtiums painting

I'm not sure of the date on this watercolor, circa the summer of 1986, or 1987. I had carefully trained these nasturtiums to cover an ugly concrete and rebar wall in John Oliver Simon's back yard. He, not seeing the beauty of my handiwork, tore them all out while he was readying the garden though they were not taking up any garden real estate. I was heartbroken, I salvaged what blossoms I could, and then painted them. Watercolor and gouache.

Nasturtiums 9x12" watercolor & gouache

Pen & ink sketch of John Oliver Simon

Christmas Day, hung over, with a parrot, Mexico City

Canadá 40, Coyoacán:

Burrrrro! Oh, burrrrro! Uh-oh! Aha! Anna? Anna! Yo quiero Coca-Cola.The parrot in the courtyard below keeps shouting and whistling TV slogans. He yells Burrrrro! and Lorrrrro! and repeats his entire repetoire at the top of his lungs. I wonder where the burro is hiding. Inside my head. Oh!

John has gone exploring in Coyacán for breakfast. I'm translating Spanish from a parrot. Hola he says. I'm translating messages from the parrot world. Oh, hangover!

Pan dulce, papaya, jugo, we have breakfast at Jorge's. Every place is closed today, it's Christmas. Last night the entire city partied until dawn. No one told me that Christmas Eve, or La Posada, was an all night affair. 

María Engracía's family was wild. At 3 AM I was utterly exhausted, drunk, ready to sleep under the table, but the night was still young. Her husband Jorge, I liked very much. We spent the evening discussing the Rosetta Stone. I found out later he was an archaeologist. I wish I had known, I have so many burning questions. But oh, my head. El perico dice: ¡Lor-r-r-ro!

Mexico journals

added 9/17

When I later told Jorge Luján, who was staying at his girlfriend Rebbe's flat, the story, he said: You must be imagining things. The neighbors don't have a parrot. ¡Ojala, tengo un dolor grande en mi cabeza!

Christmas en DF, Mexico City

Mexico City fragments: Xochimilco

When I was a child, I fantasized about going to Mexico City. I read up on Tenochtitlán, and the canals of Xochimilco, the floating islands, caught my fancy. I wanted to visit the Museum of Anthropology too. Well I finally did get to Mexico City.

You still can see some of the canals and the standing patches of water, but most of the lakebed of Xochimilco is filled with cement. The temples have been torn down. I walked on paving stones that once were part of Tenochtitlan. The basilica of the church is made of ancient dressed stone. Tenochtitlán still lives in the hidden hearts of stone. 

The underground lake still lives beneath the city. You can see glimpses of it beneath the sewer grating on the streets. The ancient lake is hidden in those cavernous depths.

added, slightly rev. 9/17
Xochimilco, in Nahuatl, is: a place seeded with flowers. Xochitl- flower, -milli- seeded land, and -co place.

Christmas en DF, Mexico City

December 25, Mexico City.

The transition from one culture to another still takes time. Absorbing this culture, I've been mute. John's friends here are all very special, an anchor I seem to need.

On Linea Dos, riding the tram into the Zócalo, the first day here was mas dificile para mi—for me. The first time I went to Baja, the same thing happened. I was overwhelmed by so many little things. But it is the people who have so little, begging for cambio, for change on every corner—the poverty is so deeply ingrained, it profoundly affects me. I am in tears.

On Linea Dos, a blind Indio with his family sang a beautiful haunting melody and people plinked pesos into his cup. Somehow, it was the timbre of his voice, that sobbing pathos one hears in a song, that brought me to tears. Welcome to DF (pronounced De Effe, for Districto Federal), the dark heart of Mexico City.

Mexico City journals
added 9/17

Christmas Day, hung over, with a parrot, Mexico Ci...

Winter solstice, Chichén Itzá

Winter Solstice, Chichén Itzá

I'm inside El Caracol, Chichén Itzá, at sunset. During the solstice, light neatly passes through one opening unscathed, with little shadow on the side walls. magic.

Sunlight wraps itself around the walls, illuminating them. I go camera crazy. In the top chamber, I take photos of John with refracted light. He is a sun god.

You have to rock climb in order to get up inside El Caracol. The circular stairway ends 12 feet above the outside hall. A tree trunk beam with carved steps near the opening to the roof offers a way up. John enters the circular stairwell. I climb an outside wall. The distance from the beam to the opening is too far for me to span. I need to try another approach.

From the top of El Caracol, on the observatory, you can enter the stairwell but then you must crawl on hands and knees because the stairs were not meant to be used in the upright position. It's about reverence. I scoot up the steps on my fanny, thus startling some Mexican boys on their way down, not many women come here. It's not an easy journey.

On the top of what's left of El Caracol, there are three slots on the roof, sight-lines for star constellations, the moon and Venus. One wonders what other astronomical observations were made here. The guidebooks place an unusual emphasis on Venus. It seems that Venus is well represented, or the guidebooks are all rather simple.

On top of the outer wall, sections of the roof had caved in, one looks down into the dark heart of El Caracol. And dreams. Time stands still. We will never know what astronomical alignments they marked.

The Yucatán is basically a flat limestone terrace raised a few feet above sea level. To the south, a long line of hills breaks the view. these hills or pu'uc rise less than 360 feet above sea level along the rift that shoved them up. A string of cenotes, or sinkholes, are visible from the air. Round wells in various stages of collapse. Jade green water necklaces strung across the Yucatán.

There are tropical fish in the sacred cenotes of Chichén Itzá, at least 100 miles inland from the sea, and there are no natural rivers here. How did the fish get here? By hurricane? By land, or sea? Where they planted here by Toltecs, or by the Mayans? Or were they trapped here during a hurricane and evolved into freshwater fish?

We hiked to the profane cenote, secular is a more apt word, and the soil gives way. We careen down a steep slope and grab at some trees to stop us. The descent into the cenote is like falling into the jaws of an ant lion's sand trap.

Inside the cenote, we discover an overgrown water temple. The land is riddled with limestone arches and partial caves. Some looked painted. So little has been done here, there is still so much to discover—even at Chichén Itzá.

At Kabáh, we find the keystone arch, the gate to the city, 11 straight miles from Uxmal on a straight, raised Mayan road. Sacabe, or sacabeob, the sacred white roads. There are no cenotes here, the Mayans are entirely dependent upon the vagaries of rain, and the capriciousness of Cha'ac, or Tlaloc in Toltec. Near the temple of the long nosed god, there is an altar to Chacmul with his head turned toward the sun. We eat bitter Mayan oranges from a wild orange tree growing in the rubble of a fallen edifice. Bitter orange, naranja agria, or Su'uts' pak'áal, is a medley of all the citrus flavors of the world. It's also the main ingredient in the chicken, and the cochinita, or puerco pibil dishes indigenous to the region.

Each pueblo strung along the main highway that travels the length of the Yucatán peninsula is like a tiny jewel encapsulating several eras of history. The Na, or traditional Mayan thatched huts stand alongside colonial buildings with their imposing tall double doors, replete with windows that open out into the world.

Topos, speed bumps, steep enough to launch your car like Steve McQueen's famous car chase scene in Bullitt, keep most of the cars at a reasonable pace. Iridescent wild turkeys (Meleagris ocellata) and pigs continually cross the road, along with the ubiquitous chickens.

A small Mayan dog, the tz'i', a delicate hound with soft ears, is seen slinking around nearly everywhere. The Mayans have nine words for dog, whether it was eaten, sacrificed, or raised to the status of a deity. In the Mesoamerican calendar, Itzcuintli, the tenth day is the day of the dog.

The diminutive, well-proportioned Mayans readily smile at you. Women carry buckets of corn to the granary, and  bring buckets of cornmeal back home on their heads. More women weave white huipil shifts, long lace petticoats, and the skinny Mayan shawl that doubles as a head cushion for a heavy-headed load.

Men everywhere on bicycles carry large bundles of wood from the jungle. An older man carries wood on his back, anchored with a forehead strap, the bundle of wood nearly as big as he is. Coatimundis and long-tailed blackbirds hide in the jungle, painted with the brilliant plumage of unnamed birds. Chuckwallas, temple guardians, enjoy their small spot in the sun.

I dreamed of iridescent feathers
falling from the sky
and we raced after them,
collecting their bounty in our arms.
A bouquet of such promise.

12/23/1986
Chichén Itzá
added 9/17
minor revision

John Oliver Simon & Maureen Hurley reading at Intersection for the Arts 12/15/86

Poet News: Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children (article, photo)

RRWG reading Burbank Activity Center with David Fisher, Maureen Hurley